Yenya's World

Tue, 12 Aug 2008

Alpha 700

My old camera stopped working with any memory card bigger than 512 MB,
so I have finally decided to buy a true D-SLR. Having several Minolta-A mount
lenses and a Minolta-compatible flash, I have decided to buy a Sony Alpha,
which is a successor of Minolta (later Konica-Minolta) cameras.

I had a great dilemma choosing between
α350
and α700
(both links point to in-depth reviews at
dpreview.com). The first one is a
newer "higher entry-level" SLR with 14.2 megapixels, live view on a tilting
LCD display, etc. The latter is a semi-pro body about a year older, 12.2
megapixels, bright pentaprism (cf. pentamirror in α350) viewfinder, etc.
But no live view.

After reading the above reviews and the article "Which Sony Alpha?", which directly
addressed my dilemma, I have decided to go for a slightly more expensive
α700 (the difference was not so big because I wanted the SAL
16-105 lens, which is sold in a set with α700, but has to be bought
separately for α350).

Want to see the photos? Look at the last page of the above reviews. Some
of my own photos are here (not edited, just scaled down; click for the full
version):

This one has been taken by my wife.

From a tearoom in Hlinsko, IIRC.

Zelená hora in Žďár nad Sázavou.

Even the photos in a foggy weather are not bad.

So, after several weeks of using α700, I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
Maybe it does not have many exceptional functions, but for many of them there
are dedicated buttons, which means you can actually use those
functions in real life shooting. Nobody who is in a hurry would use functions
hidden in some deep menus. Also their dynamic-range optimization really
works and is useful, as well as their anti-shake system built in the body
(instead of in the lens, like other vendors). So far I have found only one
drawback: the exposure bracketing can bracket by at most 0.7 EV steps,
which makes shooting frames for
HDR[?]
photos from hand difficult. The only workaround
I have discovered is to use five frames instead of three, which gives you
a range of +/-1.4 EV. Another drawback is that my home workstation is too
slow to handle 12-Mpix files, so I would probably have to upgrade soon.

UPDATE 2008/11/20: Fixed in new firmware
The version 4 firmware adds a wider EV range of bracketing (upto +/- 2 EV),
so the problem with usability for taking HDR photos from hand is gone. Good.
On the other hand, the α900 full-frame body is out now, so my α700 is
officially obsolete now :-/

2 replies for this story:

Congrats to your new toy! :-) Two questions: 1. How are you satisfied with using your old lenses on the digital body? Any picture quality problems? 2. I've heard that in cameras of another vendor it's better to switch off the in-body stabilization when you don't need it. This is because the sensor shakes all the time so if you take a snapshot from a stable tripod and with a good lens, the stabilization makes the final picture less sharp. Did/would you make some experiments about it?

As for the old lenses, the 50/1.4 is still excellent (the second picture above is taken with it, IIRC). As for 100-300/4.5-5.6, I took only few photos so far, but I did not find any problem. I did not try to use an old kit 28-80 and a Soligor 17-35, as they are both for APS-C format surpassed by the 16-105. I have the image stabilization always on. I can do test on a tripod, but so far I have been satisfied even with the photos taken on a tripod.